If Donald Trump becomes president again, he’ll “significantly increase” his powers, reinstate travel bans, and restrict teaching on race and gender, among other nightmare scenarios. Oh yeah, and he’ll destroy the global economy.
That’s according to American Enterprise Institute economist Michael Strain, who told the Washington Post, “It would be a disaster for the U.S. economy — it would raise prices for consumers and be met with considerable retaliation from other nations, which would raise the costs facing U.S. businesses. It would reduce employment among manufacturing workers. It would be very, very bad.” He was speaking about Trump’s plan for a “universal baseline” tariff on nearly all imports to the United States.
On Fox Business on Thursday, the former president called for setting this tariff at 10 percent “automatically” for all countries, a move that experts warn could lead to higher prices for consumers throughout the economy and could likely lead to a global trade war… This idea, which Trump has taken to describing as the creation of a “ring around the U.S. economy,” could represent a massive escalation of global economic chaos, surpassing the international trade discord that marked much of his first administration.
Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, called the plan “lunacy” and “horrifying. He continued, “It is a recipe for corruption. They will decide that whoever cozies up to Trump, or whoever his commerce secretary is, will get the exception.” Another expert, economist Chris Clarke, added, “On net, this would harm the American economy substantially… Producers would have higher costs, and now all the consumers are paying higher prices for goods that used to be imported.”
The art of the deal!
(Via the Washington Post)
